Datamine my energy usage? What possible good would that do? There is zero potential to sell competitve intel that NV Power doesn't already have on my usage. The data isn't of value. Online shopping and search data has made GOOG. That's valuable intel as it's 100% discretionary spending. The utility mkt offers zero utility for GOOG. This is a market in search of a customer. GOOG is essentially in the direct ad business and it will not translate into the home, beyond the networked PC and phone, which they already own. As was stated by Ash, the java toaster bullshit was just that. In 14 years it is just as immaterial. They fucking blew it and they will write that shit off their books within two years.
omg, what a flashback! the bubble before housing. instead of people bidding the junk up; its a company doing it. as someone who has been through multi booms and busts i gotta agree with this drownpruf guy. no one can be certain on market direction; but a spx negative for the yr has happened before and will happen again...maybe this year.
I'm saying they're doing it to get a feel for it. I have two thermostats at home, and Apple quoted me $249.95 per thermostat to be able to use it on my iPhone5.
It's pissing 6% of their cash. I use smarthome and it works well with the security system and I have CCTV as well. It's not going to monetize for GOOG. They don't have a fucking clue how to diversify and thus they overpaid by an OOM for something that does nothing for their ad model or ability to market services. What did youtube cost them? IIRC it was under $2B. And to add insult to injury... they paid cash for NEST! Yahoo never got over their purchase of broadcast.com but luckily this isn't as large an impact for GOOG, not even close. However, the valuation on this acquisition portends a top.
I won't ever believe YouTube is a flop for them. It's certainly given them more accurate and thus more valuable ad revenue.
I'm not saying it was their best. It just makes ad targeting more relevant to its users, and I think it really is hard to say if that makes youtube's price tag in the billions worth it. It is a fair question but Google made the decision so that's more indicative of value for their brand than anything. Ie: they probably did do some very in-depth analysis beforehand and so that they even made the decision I think is a better way to interpret their revenues impact to the bottom line that by simply doing it they clearly saw value in making the investment in the first place. Not trying to get off topic but for a firm earning $50 million EBITDA has a private share market value of $2 billion but if the same company were publicly traded you might see a triple in that valuation.